


A Shimmer Of Gold In His Lonely Days

by kahootqueen69



Series: Terrortober 2020 [2]
Category: The Terror (TV 2018), The Terror - Dan Simmons
Genre: Canon Compliant, Feelings, M/M, Post-Canon, terrortober2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-04
Updated: 2020-10-04
Packaged: 2021-03-07 18:29:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 703
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26822185
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kahootqueen69/pseuds/kahootqueen69
Summary: After James Ross leaves with an answer, Francis is left in its lonely aftermath.Terrortober 2020 Day 4:Buttons
Relationships: Captain Francis Crozier/Commander James Fitzjames, Captain Francis Crozier/Sir James Clark Ross (if you squint)
Series: Terrortober 2020 [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1956325
Kudos: 22





	A Shimmer Of Gold In His Lonely Days

**Author's Note:**

> Another short one (I still can't focus on schoolwork, so yay me). I don't think these will come to be anything longer than 1k per prompt, as these are mostly a series of thoughts that pop into my head in combination with the word we're given (that's an awful sentence, sorry). But that's also the appeal of it, I think.

“Ask him if one of these men is the one he’s calling Aglooka,” James had asked, the clattering of the daguerreotypes cutting loudly through the air as he’d shown them.

“He spoke in our tongue,” the Netsilik man had answered in Inuktitut. “He was dying.”

That wasn’t even really a lie, Francis supposed. He _had_ been dying, at the time, as they all had, until he was the only one left.

“What did Francis say?” James pressed. “Aglooka?”

Francis listened as the man who’d come with James — he hadn’t actually seen who had entered the tent, only knew for certain that, by hearing his voice, the other man was his friend who he’d promised to come back to, and failed — translated to English what the native man told the pair of Englishmen in Netsilik. He wasn’t sure whether he could listen to this part; to his friend being lied to, deceived in such a manner while he himself was sitting right outside, closer than James would ever know. He kept silent, anyway.

“Your friend took my hands,” the Netsilik man answered. “He said ‘Tell those who come after us not to stay. The ships are gone. There is no way through, no Passage. Tell them we are gone. Dead, and gone.’”

He’d left halfway through. One last look at James’s back, and that was it.

“I showed the buttons, like you said,” the Netsilik man told him. “He took them with him.”

Francis nodded. _Just as well,_ he thought. _Let him have something to hold onto._

“But,” the man continued, digging into a pocket in his furs, searching for something. “I kept one.”

He frowned as the man nudged him to take the button, but took it nonetheless. Looking down at the shiny object as he turned it over between his fingers, a small sound escaped his throat. “Why—” he started and looked up, but saw only the flap of his tent falling closed behind the Netsilik man.

Even with the cold numbing his fingers, he could still feel the ridges of the button, leaving an imprint on the pad of his thumb as he pressed down firmly on it, considering the golden object, forcing himself to feel it, to memorise it. _How many hands had touched it?_ he wondered. Whoever had made the damned things; His tailor, sewing them onto the fabric of the Navy-issued clothes he’d worn for so long; His own, more than he could count, doing up the buttons of his uniform; Jopson, reattaching them to the dark-blue wool when another had fallen off; And…

And James — Fitzjames, that is (not the other James; not Ross). Oh, how often James had touched them. Merely in passing, squeezing through _Terror_ ’s or _Erebus_ ’ narrow pathways; Hesitantly, carefully asking a question, silently, without wording it, asking him if he felt the same; Roughly, tugging and pulling at the fabric and with it the buttons, undoing him of clothes entirely; Weakly, clutching onto him in fear of slipping away, falling into the endless black of night, the strength leaving his body with every passing minute.

 _It’s funny, isn’t it?_ he thought, turning the button over in his hand again. _How an object as small as this can hold so many memories; such a wide array of feelings, of emotions._

To the Admiralty, it was only a piece of gold, a number, a statistic. Once upon a time, that was all it had been to him, too. But not anymore, not now, as he kept turning it over and over between his fingers, in his palm. He would never wear it again, he knew that much — not after he turned his back on the other James in the Netsilik tent (and James had left, thinking Francis to be dead like the rest of his crew). He’d keep it close, though. Keep it tucked in his pockets, maybe even make a new one: one on the inside of his furs, the height of his chest. Keep it and its memories, its feelings, its anger and its excitement and happiness and grief, tucked close to his heart.

Strange how, with time, such in inanimate object with no meaning, could hold so much of exactly that.

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on [tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/dashboard/blog/kahootqueen69) :)


End file.
